Art in Leadership Training

My friend and classmate Andrew sent me a link to a wonderful video on art and  learning (see below). I am a huge fan of video to help prime the pump and start the learning process down whatever branch the mind might wander. 

As I posted before, I had trouble with this aspect of learning if only because I don't "think creatively" much, at least not in terms of teaching and learning. I think creatively in terms of process and technology innovation, but rarely in terms of learning delivery. Regardless, one of the things I thought about as I watched the TedTalk video was the role playing that we do in our leadership classes.

I've written before about my organization and the industry my organization supports. We deliver lots of eLearning and CBT's and we have "compliance driven" training which is instructor-led. There isn't as much room for artistic creativity in these areas. For more about artistic creativity, feel free to read my post above, because I think there is some room for it in our delivery. But the one area where my organization might be able to claim some "creativity" in training delivery is in our leadership training.

Our two-day leadership training for supervisors and crew leaders is very much "out of the lane" that many of our "white-truck" supervisors are used to. They come to us and expect those boring, staid CBT's and the rote, compliance-driven training. Our leadership training forces our learners out of the model. In our leadership training we use small groups and fill it with role-playing exercises. These role-playing exercises force our learner to stand up and stretch their creating muscles. We ask them to act out scenarios where they will have to be a supportive leader, a coaching leader, a hands off leader, etc. Naturally during these role plays we have to have a foil or an antagonist and that is when many of our learners really get to have fun. In your video the speaker talks about using art for "idea generation" and references the Lego movie (about 9:55) in. I see these role-playing scene as our leaders chance to be "master-builders" and come up with ideas about their lives and their leadership needs to look like. 

Before this class if anyone had said, "describe an instance at your training organization where art place a part," I doubt I would have had much to answer. Now I see where our leadership training is the perfect example of art in training and the opportunity for art to help develop learning opportunities that are outside the normal. I look forward to figuring out more about how this might effect our learners and leaders and how we might be able to make it a stronger differentiation for our training.